Parenting Research is Associative, Not Causal

Even if all brains were wired identically and all parents behaved in a cookie-cutter fashion, a great deal of current research would still be flawed (or, at best, preliminary). Most of the data we have are associative, not causal. Why is that a problem? Two things can be associated without one causing the other. For example, it is true that all children who throw temper tantrums also urinate—the association is 100 percent—but that doesn’t mean urination leads to temper tantrums. The ideal research would be to a) find the behavioral secret sauce that makes smart or happy or moral kids who they are, b) discover parents who were missing the secret sauce and give it to them, and c) measure the kids 20 years later to see how they turned out. That sounds not only expensive but impossible. This is why most research we have about parenting is associative, not causal. But these data will be shared in the spirit that the perfect should not be the enemy of the good.

John Medina, Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five (2010-10-12)

• experimentation
• scientific method